


Shoulda, Coulda, Did

by tisfan



Series: MCU Kink Bingo [19]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Background Tony Stark/Bucky Barnes, Frottage, Hulk as a secondary personality, Hulk is Not Interested, M/M, Shower Sex, Wake Hulk Up When Done, explaining memes to Captain America
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 10:43:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13293132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: When Steve pats Bruce’s ass, there’s three ways it could have gone...





	Shoulda, Coulda, Did

**Author's Note:**

> From the tumblr post: passionateartist (deactivated)  
> *cries into the night* I need a new fic meme where instead of the cliched “5 Times When…” we have something like this.
> 
> * It could have gone like this:  
> * It should have gone like this:  
> * But it actually happened like this:

Bruce had been told that, when Cap woke up from the ice, and then eventually agreed to join SHIELD (because what else was the man supposed to do when everything and everyone he’d ever known was dead and gone, or almost dead?) that a whole team of cultural experts had descended on Steve like a pack of rabid lemurs to explain How the Future Worked.

A rather maudlin Steve had explained it, once, after a long winded explanation of Nyan Cat had come up at the breakfast table. He’d gotten tutors on racial relations, sexual identification, harassment policies, and modern etiquette, as well as “this is a smart phone and how to use it” and “yes, bread really does cost four dollars a loaf” and “absolutely, one thousand channels and nothing interesting to watch on television.”

“Really, so little of it means anything to me,” Steve said, staring at his stack of pancakes. “And I don’t really understand why it means anything to anyone else. Yes, I’ve seen a toaster pastry shaped like a cat, with a rainbow coming out of its… tail. And singing a song. I’ve seen it. I don’t understand why it’s funny, or why people keep repeating it. No one can explain why.”

“You and your friends, in the Howling Commandos,” Bruce said, taking a stab at it, “you had your little in-jokes, right? Things that only you and Barnes and Dugan would understand? That you’d laugh about around camp at night, to keep your spirits up before going into battle.”

“Of course,” Steve said, perking up. If Bruce could get him going, sometimes Steve would talk about the Commandos. Or Peggy. Sometimes even Bucky. Those things made the man’s eyes light up and his face would get animated, and sometimes he’d get so wrapped up in remembering the past that he’d forget -- for a little while -- that he wasn’t there anymore.

Bruce kinda hated how he lived for those moments, because Captain America was pretty all around awesome. And Steve Rogers was all around handsome.

And there was nothing Bruce could do about either of those things.

But dreaming, a little, didn’t hurt anything.

Well, maybe it hurt Bruce, but the list of things that hurt Bruce was so long that a little bit of heartache scarcely even registered.

“Consider Nyan Cat and I can haz Cheezburgr to be about the same thing,” Bruce said, gesturing with both hands, trying to indicate the whole world, “but on a global scale. It’s a joke for the whole world, but only the parts that frequent certain spots on the internet. It’s a virally-transmitted joke. They spread ridiculously quickly, almost like they’re contagious. It’s fascinating, really.”

“But they’re not funny,” Steve protested.

Bruce spent the rest of breakfast dissecting various memes, pulling up the original references, the cultural backgrounds, the pop culture references, and explaining each one in detail. It was like getting lost in a science-talk with Tony. And Steve was listening, he was paying attention. And he was leaning in closer, eyes bright, asking intelligent questions.

Bruce bumped up having a crush on Steve to a higher ranking on his list of things that were a bad idea. But he couldn’t stop.

They were in the middle of watching a few (recorded) football games, while Bruce broke down Kapernick’s taking a knee, and how that had meshed up with Black Lives Matter, which had weirdly started a boycott of the NFL on both sides (both pro BLM and “pro flag” racists were protesting the NFL for different reasons, and wasn’t that a hoot?) and Steve suddenly asked, staring at the screen:

“Why do they do that?”

Bruce glanced up in time to see a cluster of football players patting each other’s asses. And Steve was scowling; probably he’d been told a lot to keep his hands to himself as part of his gender relations and sexual harassment training.

“Oh, it’s a bonding thing, only appropriate on the field, between teammates,” Bruce said. “Partly, I think it’s because football gear is so _cumbersome_ , the only places people are going to feel it if you touch them is on their butts or the back of their arms -- see, there’s one of them going that route. It’s kinda a… low-five, maybe? Job well done? You’ll get ‘em next time, sort of thing?”

“I thought football players were particularly…”

“Overly masculine?” Bruce grinned. “There’s a lot of homoerotic subtext that goes on in sports. No one asks very many questions, and everyone tries to excuse it. But there’s a… certain bond, between teammates, and it sometimes crosses the lines of what might be considered acceptable behavior elsewhere. Personally, I think there’s just a lot of people who are a little more 3-4 on the Kinsey scale than they expected, and this is a good way to be able to be more comfortable with that part of their personality.”

***

Later, Bruce would remember that conversation.

They’d just finished cleaning up an invasion of angry, semi-sapient trees that had unexpectedly come to life and started attacking deforesters -- Bruce didn’t blame them really, in fact, Bruce was firmly on the save the trees side of the equation and the Hulk had had fun smashing a bunch of trees to splinters, so he was having mixed feelings, plus all the inevitable exhaustion that went along with having to Hulk out in the first place.

And Steve came up behind him. “You did good,” he said.

And slapped Bruce’s ass sharply.

 **How it Should Have Gone**  

Bruce raised his head, a little startled, but at the same time, warmed by the gesture and the feeling of camaraderie. “Thanks, Cap,” he said. “I’m not entirely sure we did the right thing. The trees do, actually, have a point.”

“I’d be more sympathetic to their plight, Lorax, speaker for the trees,” Tony commented over the coms, flying escort outside the quinjet, “if they’d been a little more selective as to the path of their destruction, but they were headed right for town, and the people there didn’t do anything. Besides, we got one of Strange’s cohorts to start peace talks with them. I don’t speak tree, you don’t speak tree. I think we did as well as could be expected, given what we were working with.”

“You say that when you blow up half of a city block, Tones,” Colonel Rhodes reminded him.

“I am not taking blame for that, Honey Bear,” Tony said, sounding wounded. “That’s on Justin Hammer, Vanko, and… well, someone I know with a shiny silver battle armor and a case of Very Bad Judgement…”

Tony and Rhodes bickered all the way back to the compound about whose fault the Stark Expo disaster was.

“What’s a Lorax?” Steve asked, on a private com-line to Bruce. Bruce had become Steve’s personal Urban Dictionary, Know Your Meme, and Pop Culture Encyclopedia. Bruce found he didn’t mind; it gave him an excuse to spend time with Steve, and to hear Steve’s warm voice buzzing in his ear.

So, Bruce was explaining Dr. Seuss -- or at least, his later work, since Steve might have been familiar with the man’s stint with the animation department of the United States Army during the war -- today. Okay, that was fine. He could have JARVIS queue up a few movies, get some books on his tablet, and read _One Fish, Two Fish_ to Steve. It’d be fun. 

**How it Could Have Gone**

  
There was barely a second that passed between when Steve’s hand slapped against the rounded flesh of Bruce’s left buttcheek when Bruce registered the bone deep pain of shifting.

“Back off, STAR MAN,” Bruce managed to bellow between pained groans and the inevitable fighting of his inner demon. He never liked to shift, but when it was his choice, the shift was smoother, less painful, more like the stretch of a sore muscle than a tearing, ripping, _rending_ agony of being broken down and remade.

The Other Guy roared to the surface, his footfalls inside the suddenly crowded interior of the quinjet knocking the plane back and forth. Clint swore from the pilot’s chair as he tried to maintain control of the rapidly rocking craft.

“Grab onto your butts,” Sam said, hand hovering over the emergency eject -- Pop goes the Weasel! -- lever. “Iron Man, Falcon on pickup. Hawkeye, what’s below us.”

“Wait ten… nine…” Widow started doing a countdown, keeping an eye on the terrain, to make sure Hulk didn’t land on anything breakable, like people, houses, villages, small cities? That kind of thing.

“Got Veronica on call-in,” Tony reported.

Sam yanked the lever, dropping all eight hundred pounds of green rage machine into the void. A moment later, Tony was bouncing onto the scene, the hulk-buster armor forming up around him. Sam did a quick headcount to make sure no one else fell out when the bottom dropped out who needed a quick pick-me-up.  
  
“What the hell set him off?”

Steve’s voice was tiny when he said, “I think it was me.”  
  
**Here’s how it Went**  
****  
Bruce uttered a startled laugh as Cap’s hand slapped down sharply on his ass. One of the not-particularly-discussed side effects of Hulking out meant that he was down to Stark’s specially made boxer shorts, because really, no one needed Hulk’s mean green sex machine waving around in battle like a giant veridian club. And while that particular piece of clothing was covering, when it stretched out the way it did to conceal the Hulk, it was also made of a particularly thin fabric. And it conducted sensation weirdly well.

So, Bruce didn’t just feel a quick, affectionate swat, but the heat of Steve’s hand, the slight curve to his fingers, the hard callus on the heel where Steve was constantly catching the shield.

Bruce coughed out a nervous laugh, trying to ignore how his skin buzzed and itched and yearned after that brief contact. “What the hell, Cap?”

Bruce expected the blush; Steve blushed all the time.

He expected a “oh, I thought, I mean, we were… you know… talking about the teammate thing, and--”

What he got instead was a straight up wink, a sly leer. Steve licked his lower lip and then said, “Guess I’m more of a 3-4 on that Kinsey scale you mentioned than anyone expected.”

Bruce half expected a darker flush from himself, and some sort of muttered excuse or apology or even baffled, embarrassed confusion.

Maybe it was the absense of touch; most people didn’t fuck with the Hulk, even without any side consideration for sex with Banner on the side. Tugging on Superman’s cape was a safer bet than messing around with the Hulk, even teasing.

It had been a _long damn time_ since anyone had seriously flirted with Bruce if they had any idea who he was. And Bruce was pretty careful not to let anyone who didn’t know who he was close enough to end up being in the Hulk’s area of effect damage radius. (Mostly the whole city. Bruce was pretty closed off, and while he was always wracked with guilt when something bad happened, it did mean that almost no one -- aside from Tony who was just hands down appallingly bad at taking reasonable precautions -- touched him.)

Bruce wallflowered with amazing amounts of determination. He brushed off, ignored, and milquetoasted his way through the few various social functions that Tony usually insisted he attend.

And Steve knew -- knew, without a doubt -- what the Hulk was capable of.

And he was flirting anyway.

Skin still reporting back the exact size, shape, and heat of Steve’s hand, Bruce instead raised his eyebrows and said, “Well, that’s useful information to have, Steve. Thank you for volunteering. We’ll have to test that more rigorously.” Bruce wasn’t quite sure what had gotten into him.

Steve’s eyebrow went up and he poked his tongue out of his mouth, a shock of pink, to wet his upper lip thoughtfully. “We’ll do that, then.”

Bruce still wasn’t sure what he was expecting. Later could have meant anything.

What it did mean, apparently, was being backed up against the wall in the group showers, pinned in between Captain America’s patriotic biceps and kissed and kissed and kissed until Bruce could hardly stand up, much less breathe, or think coherently.

“Steve, I--” Bruce managed to get a hand in between them, pushing at Steve’s massive chest, except that pushing wasn’t entirely what he was doing if he had to be honest with himself. Petting might have been closer -- really, pictures just did not do justice to those pecs.

“Do you not want me to? I thought--”

“This isn’t safe, Steve,” Bruce told him. He had enough control over his cardiac system these days that his pulse wasn’t pounding, but he could feel it, that itch inside his brain, just waiting, watching, to see what was going to happen. The Other Guy was decidedly curious; Bruce could feel him, thundering over to take a look out through _Puny Banner_ ’s eyes.

**What Star-man want?**

Jesus, how to explain sex to the Other Guy? Bruce let his forehead drop onto Steve’s chest in utter confusion.

“We can’t even try?” Steve asked, a little plaintive. “I thought… you know--”

“I like you, Steve,” Bruce said, muttering into Steve’s abs. Which should be carved out of marble. Put Michelangelo's David to shame. “And it’s not that… I’m not saying I’m not interested, but th’ Other Guy, he doesn’t… he doesn’t understand and I don’t want him to take it all wrong and pop out at the wrong time.” He was pretty sure he could control his heart rate, if he had to. Although honestly, he hadn’t tested it.

He hadn’t even jerked off in years; it just seemed easier not to miss it at all.

Come to think of it, Bruce couldn’t remember the last time he’d been hard. Until now.

Which, unfortunately, meant he was probably compromised and making bad decisions. Having a boner was always key to bad decisions, especially when it was a science boner, but sometimes when it was just a stiffie. And dear god, was Bruce stiff. It was all he could do not to rock his hips against Steve’s thigh.

 **What Star-Man want?** the Other Guy demanded, again.

Bruce closed his eyes, let his mind fill up with various images, memories. Television sex scenes that faded to black. Accidentally walking in on Tony and Bucky when Bucky had Tony up and spread on one of the kitchen countertops. (Talk about making a sandwich, jesus, there wasn’t enough clorox wipes in the state for that.)

There was a sense of sheer incredulousness that emanated from the Hulk. The Hulk wasn’t just smashie, Bruce could have told anyone that after about a year. He wasn’t as stupid people thought, a dark, almost childlike sort of clever.

But Hulk wasn’t a child, either.

 **Star-Man want?** Hulk seemed to consider the idea, then… **Puny Banner want?**

Bruce took a deep breath. _Yeah. I want._

**Puny Banner have Star-man. Wake Hulk up when done.**

Bruce blinked as the sense of the Other Guy rolled over and went to goddamn sleep. That had never, ever happened before. Like, ever. Even when Nat did her lullabye, or someone managed to talk Hulk down.

Huh.

Bruce shifted his weight a little, still backed up against the wall, the shower still dumping warm water on them -- thank science for hot-on-demand water heaters -- and Steve still holding him practically upright, completely naked and… he moved his hand to rest on Steve’s hip.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

Bruce shrugged. He didn’t know how to explain it. “I… uh. Kinda got permission to… carry on, Captain.” He peered up at Steve, noted that the man’s face looked like eight kinds of gorgeous with rivulets of water streaming down his skin and his hair plastered to his head like the hero in a romcom. Totally unfair. “Can’t promise much for a first time, it’s… uh. Been a while.”

Steve nudged his chin until he could brush Bruce’s lips with his. “Seventy years for me, so, we’re on the same page.”

“Oh,” Bruce said. “Well, in that case, we’ve both got a long dry spell to make up for.”

Steve reached down, slow, hesitant, not looking away from Bruce’s eyes, which made the whole thing even more shivery, until he cupped Bruce’s cock with one enormous hand. The shock waves of that had Bruce stretching up on tiptoe to push himself into the sensation, _to get more, faster, now, harder, captain, please._

Steve was so close, there was _so much_ skin touching. So much sensation, heat and fire and molten… Bruce finding even have time to think about showing down, about taking his time. He'd been so deprived, celibacy all but required. Except apparently it hadn't been. Bruce just hadn’t known how to ask.

Steve wasn't any better off, apparently. His hand on Bruce’s neck was a claw, keeping Bruce’s head tipped up. Demanding Bruce’s kiss. His other hand made Bruce’s skin tingle, the way his blood burned through him, hotter with every kiss. He focused on the empty ache gnawing away at him, bundled it up, and used it to fuel his own strange sort of courage.

It took everything in him just to reach for what he wanted, to take Steve in hand, to stroke up and down that amazing, thick length of him. Jesus, it was practically two whole handfuls -- they really did go overboard with the whole super soldier shit, didn’t they?

Steve sucked in a shocked breath, or maybe just a needy one and let it out as a heavy, growling moan. His pale blue eyes were dark as his pupils flared. His mouth tightened and a muscle in his jaw bulged, his expression lust and a taunting sort of victory.

“Gonna give you everything you want, Bruce,” Steve told him, and his fingertips slid up and down Bruce’s dick. Bruce spread his legs a little, altering his stance, trying to tempt Steve into more, now. Steve continued to tease with light, flicking touches and slow, tantalizing strokes.

One thick finger slid below Bruce’s balls, against his perineum and finally circled his hole. “This what you want? Not today, I’m afraid.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be the man with the plan, Captain?”

Steve pushed against the muscle there, a cruel tease since he apparently didn’t plan on it going any further than that, leaving Bruce with an aching emptiness. Bruce let out a slow whimper.

At the sound, Steve wrapped an arm around him, lifted and pushed Bruce against the wall in a single, powerful movement. His back hit the tiles, the chill of it driving all the air out of his lungs. He was pinned, held. Bruce almost expected that to wake the Other Guy up, but Hulk apparently was giving them some privacy, and before Bruce could marvel at that, Steve’s tongue was back in his mouth, his cock rubbing against Bruce’s.

Bruce’s legs went around Steve’s waist instinctively, and he leaned against the wall, pushing them firmly together. Pressed against Steve like that, he could feel the power in that body radiating out. Each rigid bulge of muscle delighted him, wickedly tempting.

They rocked together like that for a few, long, hot moments, sending so much pleasure through Bruce’s deprived body that it was almost pain. He shuddered, trembling, and it was as much as he could do to keep looking at Steve, who was watching him intently.

Finally, Bruce threw his head back, unable to take any more, his hips pistoning desperately against Steve’s, their cocks rubbing together with zings of electric sensation. His body was bathed in sparks of pure pleasure, stinging little jolts arching between them. Bruce wanted to keep looking, astonished at the expression of lust and desire on Steve’s face, but it was too much, and he threw his head back against the tiles, crying out.

His eyes fluttered shut, Bruce didn’t think about anything else. There was no fear, no concern, not even any anger. Just sheer, delicious joy. The world beyond that room no longer mattered; there was nothing else but the pleasure they gave to the other.

Steve held him there for a few moments longer, their foreheads pressed together while they both caught their breath. Slowly, the cataclysm of sensation passed, and Bruce felt the warmth of the water again.

“Well, that was something,” Steve said.

Bruce laughed, just a heavier breath, really, but it was… something. Wasn’t it?

And, for a change, it wasn’t something _dangerous_.


End file.
